Looking back from opposition

The Sydney Institute Quarterly – December 2008

When former Prime Minister John Howard was Leader of the Opposition, he once described himself as the most conservative leader the Liberal Party had ever had. He was right.

For most of the Liberal Party’s history the federal Party had been led by variously more pragmatic or more liberal leaders. Some, like Malcolm Fraser and Robert Menzies were personally conservative but more pragmatic, others like John Gorton and Andrew Peacock were less personally conservative and more liberal. But none were as conservative as John Howard. Something John Howard wore as a badge of honour.

In the last year, since our defeat on November 24, 2007, the Liberal Party has been led by Dr the Hon Brendan Nelson MP and the Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP. They have both moved the Party from some of the touchstones of the previous government’s agenda.

While the previous government had major achievements in the areas of the environment, outcomes for indigenous Australians and in creating employment and reforming the workplace, the new leadership team has chosen to make some subtle shifts.

The Liberal Party has joined with the Labor Government in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol (the international instrument that governs attempts by the world to address climate change) and expressing an apology by the Australian Parliament for the mistreatment of indigenous Australians.

It has also re-affirmed its support for the right of workers to contract individually with their employer but has rejected the central aspect of the previous government’s industrial relations agenda that was unpopular with the people – contracts between employee and employer that did not have as their foundation a ‘no-disadvantage’ test.

In other words, the Liberal Party that has reformed in 2008 is more pragmatic and more in the political centre than the one that faced the voters on November 24, 2007.

This by no means implies a criticism of the Coalition Government between 1996 and 2007. That the Howard era was a period worth celebrating and praising was shown by the fact that to win the electorate’s trust Kevin Rudd had to overturn so many cornerstone Labor beliefs and adopt many Liberal policies: from our tax plan to voluntary student unionism, from support for parents’ schooling choices to the private health insurance rebate.

For me, three key achievements of the previous government stand out.

Obviously the Howard Government’s record of economic management has left the country in a strong position for years to come. Strong business investment, low unemployment, a competitive tax system, and surplus budgets were all unthinkable in 1995. They have delivered a prosperity not seen for generations.

Our strong domestic position has been matched by our improved position in the world.

By the end of the Howard era we had become one of the economic and foreign policy powerhouses of Asia, as seen by our lead role following the tsunami crisis, as well as the political crises in the Solomon Islands, Afghanistan, East Timor, Papua New Guinea and so many others. Consecutive visits within days of the Presidents of China and the United States to address our Parliament pointed to our strong relations with these two world leaders and our ability to manage what some regard as two mutually exclusive relationships. John Howard showed that Australia was a country worth taking seriously again.

Thirdly, the black armband view of Australian history was consigned to the past. At the end of 2007 we were a proud nation again – positive about our future and comfortable about our place in the world.

Twelve months on, the Liberal Party must embrace a forward agenda, underpinned by a modern philosophy.

The Liberal Party of Australia was founded in 1944 by Robert Menzies as a Party of progress.

As he famously wrote in The Afternoon Light:

“We took the name ‘Liberal' because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his rights, and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea.”

The Liberal Party must again be a force for change.

The Liberal Party’s founders were men and women of vision. They came from all walks of life. They held to varying philosophies – some were the inheritors of the Deakinite legacy, others were representative of business, still others from the land, while others were strong willed women who saw a role for women in public life and intended to claim that role. It was a collection of individuals that would dominate politics for the next generation and beyond. Their approach had the Liberal Party in power for more than two thirds of the next over sixty years. Their legacy is a nation at the forefront of the great first world democracies.

The Liberal Party of today can’t afford to hope that the wheel of fortune will turn with any inevitability but like Sir Robert Menzies, Sir Richard Casey, Sir Percy Spender, Dame Enid Lyons and their confreres, we must, with our own hands, make the wheel turn ourselves.

If our Party founders were alive today, would they embrace change? As they did in 1944, I believe they would again. Now is a good time to do so.

In 1996, in every state, territory and the commonwealth the Liberal Party held around 250 lower house seats. In 2008, we hold around 160. In twelve years our reach has declined by forty per cent!

On the other hand, recent electoral contests in 2008 have shown the Liberal Party can still ‘pack a punch’. We have won the state election in Western Australia, taken the Northern Territory Labor Government ‘to the wire’ (trebling our representation), won the federal by-election in the seat of Mayo and improved our standing in the Australian Capital Territory.

Our prospects for success at the next federal election are high. We need to propose a positive agenda and not just rely on the failings of our opponents – a superficial Labor agenda, a weak Labor Ministry and an incompetent response to a world and Australian financial and economic crisis.

It is important that the public know that the Liberal Party has listened – that we have recognised the need for change in our party and the need to embrace an agenda for the future of Australia that is modern and forward looking. The Liberal Party certainly has the personnel and the ideas, it simply needs the will for it to be achieved.

Liberal philosophy asserts that by the force of our own will and the work of our own hands we can each, individually, determine our own fate. In this way, it represents a set of beliefs very much in keeping with the majority of the Australian population.

Liberals believe that government has a role to play in shaping the condition of society so as to maximise the real freedom of the individual within that society. As Sir Robert Menzies said, government is more than just a ‘keeper of the ring’.

Within the so called post-ideological world of Kevin Rudd and his government it is too easy to lose sight of the importance of philosophy in shaping how politics works in practice.

The Liberal Party must recognise that it is a force for change that has a purpose – to maximise the citizen’s liberty (both economically and socially).

In reaffirming our connection with our philosophical underpinnings we are more likely to present a coherent policy platform to the public that has at its base a view of the world that is fresh and optimistic.

Philosophically, the Party must genuinely embrace the two strands of philosophical thought that we represent.

The Liberal Party is the custodian of both the liberal and conservative philosophy of Western politics.

Both emphasise the importance of the individual.

In 2008, to me, this means creating the environment where a person’s choices are maximised and respecting the choices they make whether they are socially progressive or conservative ones.

Liberals stand for economic responsibility, small government and maximising individual freedom.

Liberals see a role for government in acting to correct ills and assisting people but not as the first port of call for each person’s needs (the first port of call should be ourselves). Liberals seek to give the individual the economic and social freedom to choose the direction they wish to take in life, empowered by a good education, a job, good health and a secure upbringing. Such an upbringing is best achieved in the environment of a secure family. While that is everyone’s aim we must recognise that it is not always so for all.

Liberals respect the bedrock institutions of our society – the Parliament, the constitution, the rule of law and the family unit as the best deliverer of social security for our young, our elderly, and our infirm.

Earlier I wrote that I believed that if Sir Robert Menzies and the other Party founders were alive today they would be part of a force for change in the modern Liberal Party.

Let me explain. In the fifties and sixties, one of the great debates in Australia raged around State Aid (government funding) for independent (in many people’s minds, specifically Catholic) schools. It was a divisive issue. It was a sectarian issue as well as being about the role of the state in the education of children.

In Goulbourn in NSW in 1962, Catholic schools closed their doors for a week and sent their pupils to local State schools in protest over the lack of government funding for their students. In 1963, the Menzies Cabinet broke with almost one hundred years of precedent to introduce state aid for independent schools. It was a seminal moment in Australia’s history. It marked the beginning of the end for religious sectarianism in this country. It was, by the way, a political masterstroke.

Sir Robert Menzies had already been a force for change in non-Labor politics. He had led the reformation of non-Labor political parties in 1944 when the non-Labor side of politics was seemingly at its nadir.

So in both an organisational and policy sense, the Liberals of the Menzies era were prepared to change.

The Liberals of this time must be prepared to look to the future in an equally unblinkered way if we wish to survive and flourish.

A similarly marked shift that is necessary for the contemporary Liberal Party is in our approach and rhetoric on the issue of climate change.

The view that the activity of the human race has added to changes to the climate and the warming of the earth, is not a view with which one will get any argument from younger generations and which is increasingly accepted by all generations.

There is a demonstrable need to address the release of carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere.

That this must be done in a way that maintains our standard of living and is economically sustainable is also beyond question.

The Liberal Party must place itself at the forefront of this debate. The previous government had a sound record of action in this area. As a direct result of the policies of the Howard Government, it is estimated that Australia will save eighty seven million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by 2010. Such a result would be commensurate with removing fourteen million cars, trucks and buses from our roads and ending all domestic rail, air and shipping movements!

We cannot now vacate the field to our political opponents. Instead, we need to be the side of politics that provides the solutions. We have the economic credibility to carry the argument for the environment. Let’s use that capital to help individuals and society.

The Opposition is committed to setting medium and long term targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The previous Government had already begun the work to establish the framework for an emissions trading scheme by 2011-12. We had a commitment to sustaining the great forests of the developing world and extending our own and the current government should reaffirm this commitment – not just because it is the right thing to do but because of the positive impact it has on reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

The central thesis of Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital (1995) is that involvement in community, sporting, political and service organisations has declined over the last one hundred years. The book’s author, Robert Putnam, found that the only case where this was not so was in people joining and becoming active in green causes:

“The traditional forms of civic organisation whose decay we have been tracing have been replaced by vibrant new organizations. For example, national environmental organisations and feminist groups grew rapidly during the 1970s and 1980s and now count hundreds of thousands of dues-paying members.”

The interest in environmental causes has only grown since the early 1970s. The popularity of GetUp!, the continued support for the Australian Greens and Australian Democrats before them and my own experience as a local Member of Parliament, should tell us that interest in the environment, and now, in particular in climate change is not about to abate.

In the same way that the Liberal Party’s founders grasped hold of new opportunities for change and an extension of the Liberal Party’s reach, we are uniquely placed as a Party to do the same now. We have the economic credibility earned through years of outstanding economic outcomes over the period of the Howard Government to argue that we can deliver practical environmental outcomes that marry a desire to stop the damage that climate change will do with a sustainable economy that delivers a standard of living to the people we represent that they expect.

Both liberals and conservatives will want this outcome.

The fundamental principle of both is that it is not enough to simply ‘hold the ring’ – society expects more from the great to protect the less great. But for the great majority of society, who need neither handouts nor a hand-up, Government should leave a very small footprint on their lives.

We can rebuild the Liberal Party platform based on principles such as these.

The Liberal Party’s founders were prepared to embrace change both structurally and in policy. They reformed the non-Labor side of politics and by granting State Aid to independent schools overturned a century of precedent. Similarly today, the new generation of Liberals must work for change – both structurally and in policy. By leading on solutions to the issue of climate change the new generation of Liberals can demonstrate that they believe progress is in the interests of the Party and the country.

By tacking to the centre of the political spectrum the Liberal Party can highlight to the people that it truly is the custodian of both the liberal and conservative strains of non-Labor philosophy.

In both ways, the message from the Liberal Party should be clear – we are serious about being back in government in Australia and delivering good government to the people as we have before for two thirds of the time since the founding of the Party in 1944.